Laura Long
Charmed
When I was five I played in a torn
pale-green gown
drizzled with sequins
swinging from loose threads.
I didn't know this was a grown-up
frock from some rag pile,
I loved how the skirt
dragged behind me
like a glorious beaver tail
and glossy buttons
winked down the front.
Maybe the gown's green
is why one afternoon in the sea
of summer grass
a baby praying mantis
jumped on my arm and crouched
amid the hairs—a stilted creature
made of thread and light
with a triangular head pinned on.
When one of its bulging eyes
stared straight into mine
for a long instant, my head fizzled
into a dandelion puff and
a breeze whistled in.
~
From the Book of Rain
As clouds smudge the sky
over newly greened woods
pricked by wild pinks,
an old book swells with air
and pages unglue from the binding
clotted with a concoction
of marrow from a horse's
broken femur, a mare that pranced
on rocky roads once
upon a time. The mist recalls her
in the field, how she stepped
gray in gray rain, how
her nostrils quivered to read
the grasses her teeth ripped,
her foal sketched within,
the slaughter house never
in her mind, her skin pricking
with joy in the spring rain.
Every time the rain pauses,
warblers dart amid slick leaves,
exclamation points set free.
~
Interrupted by Blue
I've tried to get a thought pinned
precisely to paper all morning
but I can't, so I stare out and see it's turned
to November in May—after spells
of rain the sun breaks in then more rain
slants down. The tree trunks remember
winter and how to turn dark,
but their small new leaves
glow. Each leaf seems
a lamp, lit from within,
a shaped green that floats
on brooding air. I go back to brooding
as if polishing old silverware,
rubbing the puddles of spoons,
when a bluebird
swoops through the tarnished air
and glows more blue than seems
possible, as mysterious
as a coin from an unknown land
that falls back into water
the instant I wake up.
~
return to poetry home~